


Almost Seemed to Shine Again

by StarsInMyDamnEyes



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, BAMF Fringilla Vigo, Competent Fringilla Vigo, Competent Jaskier | Dandelion, Gen, IT Shit That I Just Made Up, Imperial Era, Imperial Jaskier, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Friendship, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg are in Cahoots, Smart Jaskier | Dandelion, So jaskier slash emhyr has a tag but jaskier & emhyr doesnt i see how it is, Spy Jaskier | Dandelion, Star Wars AU, Warnings to be updated when shit happens, Yes beta we rise like Skywalker didn’t, but also rebel jaskier, come on give me my Fringilla tags, double agent jaskier, emhyr var emreis is NICE, for some fucking reason this is about him!!!, force-sensitive yennefer, imperial emhyr, more tags will be added, rebel yennefer, some tags will be removed, they are fighting WARS in the STARS what more do you want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28515297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarsInMyDamnEyes/pseuds/StarsInMyDamnEyes
Summary: Lieutenant Julian Alfred Pankratz of the Imperial Army shot bolt upright in bed at the beeping of a comm.His free hand scrambled for it, caught up in the tangle of blankets that he’d not quite deigned to return after his assignment to that blasted ice planet, muttering curses to himself to try and clear the grogginess from his voice as he fumbled his way to the device.“Shit, shit, shit,shit- Hello, Lieutenant Pankratz, what is it?”A familiar voice rang through the comm. “Congratulations, Lieutenant.”“Congratulations?” Julian asked, biting back a yawn as he sat up, back straight as a steel rod, as though his posture would compensate for the fact that he was, in fact, still in his underwear, tangled up in a blanket, in his bed, as he spoke to hiscommanding fucking officer.The inception of a rebellion fighting against the Galactic Empire is no surprise. Less expected, of course, is where local head-up-his-arse Imperial officer Julian Pankratz’s loyalties ended up lying.But that’s just part of the intrigue.
Relationships: Fringilla Vigo & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Emhyr var Emreis, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 17
Kudos: 30





	1. Complacency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teamfreehoodies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/gifts).



> A thank you to the esteemed Amber, to whom this fic is gifted, both for beta-ing and for the enthusiasm & love. This one shall, of course, be for you.

**The Star Destroyer _Extinguisher_ , above Malastare**  
**9 Standard Hours Ago**

_“-er! Get it together, for fuck’s sake, the Imps have almost-”_

_Head lolling, he could barely blink the haze of injury - and probably his own blood - from his eyes long enough to focus on Yen’s visage, swimming out of view as she moved, dragging him._

_He’d have sworn, had his tongue not felt like lead in his mouth._

_“Stay with me!” Yen hissed, and cursed, flinging him back against a wall as she- as they took cover, the familiar sound of blaster fire accompanying red flashes in his peripheral vision. “Fuck!”_

_This wouldn’t do. He was a liability to Yen at the moment - and the odds of success were vastly lower if, instead of two rebel operatives, they attempted to conclude the mission with an operative-plus-a-deadweight. For one, nicking a ship would be out of the question, and, ace pilot as she was, she wasn’t as good a shot as him when her focus was on piloting - and when she wasn’t cheating with that karking Force of hers, of course._

_He could make the same shots that she could without the damn thing, thank-you-very-much, and- ah. If he was conscious enough to internally grumble over Yen’s blasted secret, he was conscious enough to fire_ back _._

_Blinking, the muck from his eyes - head wounds did bleed with an almost disgusting intensity - he took a deep breath, oriented himself, and pulled his blaster from its holster._

_“You sure you can hit a target like that?”_

_Yen’s voice was tinged with a concern that she’d never admit to - a concern that he only knew was there because they’d been doing this shit together for years, now - and he didn’t nod, so as not to jostle his skull whilst his head still throbbed - hopefully from the blood loss, and not a concussion._

_“I can shoot better than you with my eyes closed,” he grumbled, taking aim._

_“Whatever you say, hotshot.”_

_But he heard the smile in her voice._

* * *

**The Star Destroyer _Extirpator_ , above Malastare**  
**(the other side of it)**  
**Present**

Lieutenant Julian Alfred Pankratz of the Imperial Army shot bolt upright in bed at the beeping of a comm.

His free hand scrambled for it, caught up in the tangle of blankets that he’d not quite deigned to return after his assignment to that blasted ice planet, muttering curses to himself to try and clear the grogginess from his voice as he fumbled his way to the device.

“Shit, shit, shit, _shit_ \- Hello, Lieutenant Pankratz, what is it?”

A familiar voice rang through the comm. “Congratulations, Lieutenant.”

“Congratulations?” Julian asked, biting back a yawn as he sat up, back straight as a steel rod, as though his posture would compensate for the fact that he was, in fact, still in his underwear, tangled up in a blanket, in his bed, as he spoke to his _commanding fucking officer_.

“On your promotion,” Colonel Emreis said, his usually steely voice warmer than was customary for the man. “It has been under consideration for a while now, and with the recent demotion of Captain Dewitt, a position has opened up.”

Julian blinked.

Stared at the comm.

This was... unexpected. An honour, to be sure, but not something he’d planned around, especially considering his-

Well. His preferred extracurricular activities, to put it nicely. He’d been struggling with his schedule even as Lieutenant.

“I- I’m honoured, Colonel. This is- Effective when?”

Emreis huffed over the comm, amused- he’d never _truly_ seemed to buy Julian’s bumbling as a genuine trait, viewing his frequent displays of foolishness with a helping of mirth rather than frustration or vexation. It was likely the reason he still had any modicum of faith in him, the reason he’d kept him on as a protege in the first place - everyone else had, by now, likely written him off as an utter incompetent.

The Colonel’s esteem... it vindicated him.

“Effective in two standard hours,” the Colonel said. “Captain Dewitt was recently reassigned and has been working closely with the crew of the Star Destroyer, the _Extinguisher_ , and as you’ll be replacing him, Admiral Denhard is meeting you aboard the _Extirpator_ in one and a half standard hours for your transfer. A short ceremony, too, will be held on the ship. Of course, you didn’t hear it from me-” and it was innocent, almost like an afterthought- “but from the messages on your datapad detailing all of this, that you’ve no doubt already read.”

 _Fuck_.

Jaskier scrambled out of bed, doing his level best to pull on a fresh uniform without making it too obvious over the comm that he was doing so. “My apologies, Colonel, I was-”

“Out drinking, I am aware. It was your day off, Lieutenant, you’d be forgiven for being careless. Dewitt’s failure in dealing with the rebels’ attack warranting apprehension was unexpected, but what’s done is done. I suppose the loss of such a massive fuel shipment stung. Though, next time, you might try and be a bit more... prepared, in case of unexpected eventualities, yes?”

Julian breathed out.

“You’re a fucking lifesaver, Colonel, thank you.”

He was sure that the man was smirking on the other end of the comm. “Show that imbecile Denhard’s crew up, Lieutenant, and we’ll call it even.”

Julian finished tugging his vest over his head and slipped his uniform jacket on. “Bad blood?”

“Nothing so unprofessional. He’s merely... ah, how to put it nicely... an utter imbecile who’s lost the Empire more money in the past standard year than he’ll make over his whole career.”

Julian snorted, and then hummed thoughtfully to himself. If Denhard had been commanding the _Extinguisher_... of course.

“How incompetent,” he said, pointedly not smirking to himself.

“Indeed. Well, I’ll see you at the ceremony, Lieutenant Pankratz.”

“Colonel,” Julian said, and the comm went dead.

That had been unexpected. Really, he supposed that Admiral Denhard should have taken the fall for the fact that the rebels kept getting one over on him, but it wasn’t exactly displeasing, per se. Especially given that Captain Dewitt had been a pompous arse who’d implied on occasion that Julian had only made Lieutenant, given his _attitude_ , due to his parents’ status - an entirely false claim, of course.

He’d only made the _academy_ thanks to his parents’ status, thank you very much. He’d made Lieutenant with his attitude because the Colonel had seen past it, and Colonel Emreis had influence, for better or for worse.

Julian sighed, and adjusted his cap in the mirror, to ensure that it held his hair properly in place over the barely-scabbed-up wound on the side of his head. Thank whatever higher power there may be out there for bacta, really - it would have been downright embarrassing to show up to his own promotion ceremony with a head wound.

He looked around his quarters.

Blast. If he was moving aboard the _Extinguisher_ \- which was, for the record, only a marginally stupider name for a karking Star Destroyer than _Extirpator_ \- he’d be abandoning his quarters here. With certainty, he wouldn’t have time to move his belongings out of the room - shouldn’t need to, given that either his uniforms and blasters would be replaced, or someone else would move them for him.

He’d not been foolish enough to store personal effects in his room aboard the Destroyer, of course not - but the blankets... those, he would miss.

He also needed to get rid of them, or he’d be written up for misconduct.

And, of course, he’d have to take a little leave of absence from his more illicit activities, too - a schemer he might be, but part of that, of course, was knowing when to play things straight. Besides which, the Extinguisher had been something of a rebel punching bag, as of late. Something about their absolute buffoon of an admiral, and the idiot of a captain working alongside him.

Sighing to himself, Julian pulled out his datapad. The things he did for the sake of not being publicly disgraced, it- it boggled the mind, sometimes.

* * *

**A Black Market, Corellia**  
**Interstitial**  
**(still in the present, for better or worse)**

_“Hey, Yen, I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”_

_Yennefer swore under her breath at the activation of her comm, and smiled sweetly at the black-market trader that she was currently sweet-talking into giving her a decent price for some of the Imperial fuel she’d stolen from the Star Destroyer’s supplying vessel the previous day._

_“Please, excuse me, this will only take a minute,” she said, and then, as an afterthought- “You don’t need to listen in. It’s not that interesting.”_

_“I don’t need to listen in. It’s not that interesting.”_

_Missing a conversation, after all, was far less conspicuous than missing credits._

_“This better be important,” she snarled into the comm, by way of greeting. “I’ve almost gotten this slimeball to pay a half-decent price for some of our fuel, and you’re interrupting.”_

_A hesitation, down the encrypted line._

_“It’s... significant?”_

_Yennefer sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Get on with it.”_

_“Okay, so the good news is, I’m actually not concussed, it was the blood loss, so I technically didn’t take any undue risks. Bad news, something came up and I’m destroying this comm. I swear I’ll reimburse you for it, so please don’t kill me when we next meet up, alright?”_

_“Are you in danger?”_

_“Only of an extremely hectic schedule,” he said, and Yennefer could hear the grimace in his voice._

_Whether that was some kind of euphemism, or a genuine comment on... whatever his day job was, Yennefer didn’t know. He was around infrequently enough, and at odd enough hours, to assume that he was a genuinely busy man, but- a job could surely be ditched if it was posing enough of a problem. Yennefer herself had offered to house him._

_“Why destroy the comm, then?”_

_“Imperial security, Yen, you know how it is- they’re increasing it.”_

_“What? Why?”_

_A hesitation. “Paranoia, probably, look, I’ll-”_

_“Tell me next time?” Yennefer said, dryly. “As you always do?”_

_Cutting across her, he spoke up, a tension in his voice that hadn’t been there priorly. “And that’s time, my sincere apologies, Yen- I’ll catch you later.”_

_“Don’t you dare fucking leave me hanging, Jaskier, you bastard-”_

_The line went dead, and resignation settled in the pit of Yen’s stomach._

* * *

**The Star Destroyer _Extinguisher_ , above Malastare**  
**Present**  
**(time, disappointingly, remains linear)**

The ceremony had, as promised, been short.

It was also efficient - the Colonel had come across on the transport with him, to attend it alongside him, which made something warm unfurl in Julian’s stomach - and they’d only had a few minutes to exchange pleasantries before Julian had then been asked to introduce himself to Admiral Denhard and the naval staff of the _Extinguisher_.

He’d gotten looks about it, he knew. Yet another army officer commandeering the troops on a Star Destroyer - it was unfortunate, really, that the _Extinguisher_ ’s presence in orbit around Malastare was so intrinsically tied to the fuel operation on the ground.

Well. Unfortunate for Admiral Denhard and his men, of course. It was most fortunate for Julian, who far preferred the odd ship and Star Destroyer to the humdrum monotony of a ground base. It was such a shame that he’d not really had a say in the direction of his career - then again, if he were Navy, he’d have little excuse to go planet-side as often as he did.

But that was more of a general observation, far less related to his position on Denhard’s ship.

A much nicer position, incidentally, than the one he’d been occupying on it the other day - that being, having his limp and bleeding form dragged around by one Yennefer- actually, he had no idea what Yen’s surname was, if she had one.

It was mildly amusing - Lieutenant Pankratz had, amongst enough Star Destroyers to only be a few TIEs short of a blockade - gone planetside, donned some mildly more comfortable clothing, robbed Denhard and Dewitt blind alongside perhaps one of the most efficient (as much as it pained him to admit it) rebels in the sector, bled all over the floor, and then gotten back planetside, where said rebel accomplice had then patched up his wounds, and said his goodbyes to her as she got off-world, all efficiently enough to go back and get a solid night’s sleep before his _karking promotion_.

Fuck, it was hilarious, was what it was.

It was a good thing that the ceremony was so short, because the longer he’d had to keep a straight damn face, the more hysterical the situation became.

Still, he’d managed to keep his composure - of course he had. If he was in the habit of letting things slip, he wouldn’t bloody well have made Lieutenant, made _Captain_ , with his... attitude. They _did_ tend not to award military ranks to rebels in the Galactic Empire.

Although, of course, he’d have to find a new Star Destroyer to vex on his jaunts off the clock, now that this one was _his_ , practically speaking. And find a way to re-establish contact with Yen. He’d had to destroy the encrypted comm he used to contact her before the _Extinguisher_ had him go through security - Denhard had, predictably, overdone his countermeasures against getting robbed again.

Really, as _if_ Julian was going to pull anything _as a lieutenant_. It was laughable.

The ceremony had been short, the tour of the ship shorter. _Here’s your rooms, same layout as the one you came from, keep an eye on your ‘pad,_ followed by the galaxy’s bitterest utterance of _Captain_ that Julian had ever heard - and he’d borne witness to Dewitt commanding his troops just the other night.

Speaking of Dewitt, Julian was fairly certain this was _his_ room. The lingering smell of Corellian tobacco that seemed to have seeped into the very walls, as well as the fact that he was de-facto taking over Dewitt’s role on the _Extinguisher_ both supported this conclusion, and he wouldn’t much care, ordinarily, but _Corellian tobacco_.

In that moment, Julian felt even more vindicated in managing to destroy Dewitt’s reputation as a happy little side effect of his thievery. _Corellian tobacco_. The stuff was disgusting.

He’d need some kind of odour neutraliser, or perfume, or _something_ , to cover up the stench.

Sighing, Captain Julian Alfred Pankratz pulled out his datapad and checked his schedule. It appeared that it had been too much to hope for, that Dewitt’s problems wouldn’t become his to clean up, but- such was karma, apparently. You rob a man’s Star Destroyer of fuel, you suddenly find yourself saddled with the business of making up the blunder of a lost shipment of fuel aboard a Star Destroyer. Such was, apparently, the way of things.

Really, though, you’d think they’d let it go - it wasn’t as if they didn’t have an excess of fuel shipments lying around. Some of them, Julian knew, were even classified, which was simply ridiculous - why, in the name of all that was sane and sensical, would someone classify a _fuel shipment?_

Either way, it wouldn’t be too difficult to get accustomed to his new station. He’d do what he always did - be competent enough to go unnoticed for his shortcomings, and airheaded enough to go unnoticed for his successes. Become unremarkable enough that nobody paid him much heed, become annoying enough that nobody would want him around.

It was a simple strategy, but it was a niche that worked for him. It had gotten him this far, after all, and he couldn’t really foresee anything that could throw a wrench in his works that also... well. That also had any chance at all, whatsoever, of happening.

* * *

**Some Fucking Academy Building, Coruscant**  
**7 Standard Years Ago**

_The Colonel was waiting for him outside the hall, and Julian saluted him smartly as he passed._

_“Colonel.”_

_Instead of returning the firm, formal greeting, Colonel Emreis simply smiled warmly at him, kindly and completely unexpectedly. It was, by and large, not what Julian had expected. Obviously._

_“What are you doing here, Colonel?” he asked, curiosity tinging his voice._

_The Colonel chuckled. “I simply wanted to congratulate my protégé on his promotion.”_

_“Weren’t you otherwise occupied?”_

_“Even I have time off duty, Pankratz, as much as it may seem otherwise.”_

_“Right,” Julian said, shuffling a little. “But why are you here, specifically? I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than attend the promotion ceremony for, what, like seven lowly-ranked nobodies? I mean, even if you don’t have pirates to maim, or order to restore, you could have like... read a book, or something.”_

_The Colonel narrowed his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips. “Is this a demonstration of you trying to bait a compliment out of me, Pankratz?”_

_Snapping to attention, Julian Alfred Pankratz saluted and replied, in a caricature of formality. “No, sir, my sincerest apologies, sir!”_

_The Colonel, for his part, did not seem to take any offence - he never really did, to Julian’s antics, for the most part because he got his work done on time and to a high standard, propriety be damned. So what if he took the piss a little? He was damn good at his job. Though he couldn’t for the life of him see what was so interesting about him to Colonel Emreis’ eyes._

_Eyes sparkling with amusement - for whatever reason - the Colonel saluted him swiftly, a casual gesture that was at the same time far more respectful than anything Julian had shown... oh, any of his superiors, really. The Colonel spoke again. “Congratulations on your promotion, officer.”_

_Julian huffed._

_Officer. How demeaning._

_He was, of course, a staff sergeant._

* * *

**Still Aboard the _Extinguisher_ , above Malastare**  
**Present**  
**(but the version of the present that’s 3 standard days after Captain Pankratz’s promotion)**

Captain Julian Alfred Pankratz had been aboard the the _Extinguisher_ for a shockingly short period of time before the very fabric of the universe itself decided to stop whatever it was doing, stride over to him, and make sure that he was very thoroughly forced to _eat his own words_ before an audience of Admiral Denhard and a smattering of higher-ranking naval staff, a hologram of Colonel Emreis, one of the Generals that the Colonel didn’t like very much that Julian had never been introduced to by name, and- and the _Grand Inquisitor_ , is who that bloody was, Julian was sure of it.

He’d never met the man himself, of course - _of course_ he hadn’t - but he’d heard the stories, the rumours.

_Apparently the Emperor and the Lord Usurper keep a Jedi pet on a leash._

He’d also dug into the records, a little, when he’d had the time and opportunity, and could happily lay that particular rumour to rest - the Emperor and the Lord Usurper did not, in fact, keep a Jedi pet on a leash. Given that a significant portion of their karking Inquisitorious were ex-Jedi that had pledged their allegiance to the Emperor, it would be more accurate to say that they kept _many_ Jedi pets on a leash.

But that was a digression.

His focus, in the here and now, was very much supposed to be on the meeting he was joining on the bridge.

A meeting, incidentally, which he would have been more _on time for_ , had Admiral Denhard notified him that it had been moved forward before it actually started.

Julian did not like that man.

“As I was saying,” the disliked General continued, “the fact that the _Extinguisher_ has become such a frequent target for insurgents suggests some kind of security leak, and I, for one, will not stand idly by whilst the security of the Empire is compromised.”

Denhard stroked his beard. “But what to be done, General? Malastare is already heavily guarded thanks to it being the only source of Malastare fuel in the galaxy. If the current troops have been ineffective, surely it would be a waste of resources to do more of the same?”

“Another Star Destroyer, perhaps?” That was one of the naval officers that Julian was unfamiliar with.

He shook his head. “Pointless, Midshipman... I’m sorry, I’ve entirely forgotten your name. But there are already two Star Destroyers in orbit around Malastare, the _Extinguisher_ and the _Extirpator_. The _Extirpator_ has not been able to offer useful aid to the _Extinguisher_ during any raids, thanks to the logistics - there is no point in adding more of what doesn’t work.” Julian paused. “Besides which, Malastare doesn’t need a blockade. It would only hinder the efficiency of fuel exportation.”

“Agreed,” the Colonel said. “For this reason, the General and I have requested the presence of the Grand Inquisitor. It seems that he may offer a solution that us military men cannot.”

“Thank you, Colonel Emreis,” the Grand Inquisitor said, in a gruff baritone, though it was unclear what the Colonel was being thanked for. “I believe that I can, on behalf of the Inquisitorius, offer aid. Whilst the fuel thieves seem adept at bypassing Imperial security - which shall only serve to the detriment of their sentences when caught - I doubt that they would have so much luck against an agent of the-”

“You want to send an Inquisitor to my ship?” Admiral Denhard scoffed. “Preposterous. I have enough to deal with without your mystical sithspawn waltzing in like they own the place.”

The Grand Inquisitor, to his credit, did not bristle, not a hint of frustration appearing across his weathered, weary face. “I assure you, Admiral, the Inquisitor that I have dispatched - as well as all members of my order - are as professional as they are effective. He will not disturb you whilst doing his job.”

“Dispatched?” Denhard spat. “So this Inquisitor is to be assigned to my ship, whether I like it or not?”

Julian frowned. “Careful, Denhard. You’re in no position to be making demands. With Captain Dewitt gone, you’re the only one left culpable for the massive losses that these thieves have cost us- the Empire, I mean.”

“Not a word out of you, Captain Pankratz,” Denhard spat. “You’re out of line.”

“That being said, he is correct,” the Colonel said, peering down at Denhard. Julian once again thanked the stars for Colonel Emreis. He damn well owed his entire military career to the man. “Given that it is your failures we are trying to amend, you would do well to hold your tongue and not aggravate the situation.”

Denhard scowled.

Julian smirked.

“So- Grand Inquisitor, I apologise, but- how does this Inquisitor plan to stop the fuel thieves?” It was the midshipman again. “I mean no disrespect, of course, I only ask for the sake of clarification.”

The General opened his mouth to no doubt chastise the officer, a scornful look on his face, but the Grand Inquisitor interrupted calmly.

“He is an agent of the Force. He will be able to sense things your cameras may not catch, and has abilities beyond those of even the most highly trained of soldiers, Midshipman. I assure all present that members of the Inquisitorius are nothing more than specialised agents.”

“So be it,” Denhard spat. “I look forward to working with this... Inquisitor of yours.”

His tone left no doubt that he would sooner hang himself up by his own intestines than willingly work alongside one of the Inquisitorius’ members, and Julian pointedly did _not_ start smirking about that, too, as he took in the glare that half the persons in the meeting were currently directing at the Admiral.

Still, not one to waste an opportunity to bother his superiors if he could, Julian spoke up.

“Pardon me, General, Colonel, Grand Inquisitor-” he cast a look at Denhard and pointedly refrained from saying _Admiral_ \- “but I’d like to inquire as to why this meeting was called if the decision to send an Inquisitor had already been made. Surely, if it were a simple formality, it would not need so many high-ranking individuals present.”

The Colonel hummed, and Julian bit back a laugh as the answer to his own question dawned on him.

Denhard’s conduct must have been truly abysmal, if he’d warranted such a show of power, if he’d needed to be shown exactly how outvoted he was on this particular decision in such a roundabout way. The man himself was a washed-up nobody who had been granted his rank because he’d known the right people, and even someone like the Colonel, several ranks below him and from a different branch of the military, had more respect than he did.

Judging from the reddening of his face, Denhard had realised it too.

“That’s enough insolence out of you, Captain,” the General scoffed. “Stars know, you only made your rank because the Colonel still vouches for you, for some unfathomable reason.”

“Now, now, keep it professional,” the Grand Inquisitor said, mildly. “Let’s not resort to petty squabbling, it’s unbecoming.”

One of the officers working the comms snickered, and Admiral Denhard shot them a glare.

“If we are all in accordance, then shall we agree to end this meeting?” Colonel Emreis said, his tone even, but brooking no argument.

Denhard’s reply was stiff. “Very well, Colonel. I eagerly await the arrival of your- ah, your... Inquisitor.”

Julian saluted towards the comms as they disconnected.

An Inquisitor.

A Force-sensitive bastard poking their nose around everywhere on the ship.

Well, Julian thought to himself, as he made his way from the bridge to the cramped little office space that he knew for a _fact_ had not been Dewitt’s - it was missing the tobacco stench, for one - to continue with his work.

That certainly threw a wrench in his plans.


	2. Distortion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inquisitor arrives, and Yennefer meets with a contact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting! I had exams :(

**An Overpriced Cantina, Corellia**  
**Present**  
**(unlike Jaskier)**

“Hey,” Yennefer said, a scowl plastered on her face as she approached her unamused acquaintance. “What’s with the fucking secrecy?”

Fringilla Vigo, an extremely elegant and efficient woman with a handy stock of extremely elegant and efficient vibroblades on her at all times, was a very handy ally to have, and - according to her - Yennefer was lucky that she was even willing to give her the time of day.

Had she been Jaskier, she’d have made some comment along the lines of Vigo being so attracted to her that it was messing with her head, but she wasn’t Jaskier, and so she chose to hold onto her dignity instead. Furthermore, Vigo didn’t suffer fools gladly - didn’t suffer them at all, in fact, the vibroblades weren’t just for show - and Yennefer liked her head right where it was, thank you very much.

Firmly attached to her neck.

“Yennefer,” Vigo said, primly, downing a sip of whatever swill she’d wound up purchasing from the bar with a grimace. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“I got held up. A smuggler at the docks thought that he could get away with my cargo.”

“Ah, yes, the Malastarian fuel, correct? It’s a shame the Rebellion isn’t more organised, otherwise we could have distributed it among the other cells.”

Yennefer snorted, not bothering to ask how Vigo knew. Vigo always knew. “Would the rebellion pay me for it?”

“In an ideal world, you’d be working for us, and that would be it, but enough of the small talk. I’m assuming you didn’t request an urgent rendezvous with me because you enjoy my company so much, did you?”

“Really, Fringilla, you make it sound like hanging out with you is a chore,” Yennefer said, grinning sharply, dangerously at her. “But you’re right. I need your help with something.”

Amused, Vigo snorted. “Obviously.”

“I have a friend,” Yennefer said, and pointedly ignored Vigo’s mutter of _shockingly_. “Jaskier. He’s the one who helped me nab the fuel shipment off of Malastare, and I’ve been working with him for years now.”

“How nice.”

“A few days ago - four, if you want to be precise about it - Jaskier comm’ed me out of the blue, said that something came up, he needed to destroy his comm, and cited his day job as an excuse. Said that the Empire was increasing security.”

Vigo studied Yennefer over the rim of her glass, her gaze piercing enough that Yennefer felt that she was back at the Temple, opposite-

No. She wasn’t going to think about that.

“You think he’s in trouble,” Vigo said. “Is this one of your Jedi feelings?”

“No,” Yennefer snorted, voice flat. “And keep your mouth shut about that, I don’t need bounty hunters on my tail from here to Kessel again, Vigo. The reason I think Jaskier’s in trouble is because he cut off all communication with me the morning after we stole a shipment of rare and expensive fuel off of Malastare.”

Vigo took another sip of her drink, this time keeping the grimace off of her face. “Your last contact with him was on Malastare?”

“Face-to-face, yes. I don’t know where he comm’ed me from, though, but if he’s got any sense in his head he’d have gotten off-planet before he got himself noticed. Anyone who isn’t a dug or an Imp piques the interest of their security pretty quickly.”

At this, Vigo pulled a face of utter exasperation, and honestly, Yennefer couldn’t blame her. Roundabout, Jaskier could be anywhere - could be any _one_ , too, because she wasn’t stupid enough not to realise when an alias was an alias - and, to complicate matters further, his face was worryingly generic.

Had she been anyone else, Yennefer would have - however bitterly - written Jaskier off as a lost cause, until he at some point managed to comm her again, but Yennefer wasn’t anyone else. She was tenacious, she was determined, and, perhaps most importantly, she knew Fringilla Vigo.

Vigo knew things, it was her job to know things - she was the best slicer and information broker this side of Alderaan. The only reason, in fact, that Yennefer relied on Jaskier’s intel rather than hers was that Jaskier’s came in for free. Vigo, on the other hand, through-and-through rebel though she was, still had to make ends meet, and if that meant charging for her services...

Well. The economy, especially under the Empire, was a brutal thing. Yennefer wasn’t about to begrudge her any of the payment that she deserved.

“Can you find him?” Yennefer asked, and Vigo snorted.

“I’ll need more than that to go off of. Do you have any holos, personal information, biometrics, known residences? I need to know who I’m looking for before I can find them - but yes, I can find him. It’ll cost you, though.”

Yennefer - because she had a modicum of dignity left - refrained from pulling a face.

“I know.”

* * *

**The Star Destroyer _Extinguisher_ , above Malastare**  
**Present**  
**(yeah, yeah, quell your surprise)**

Captain Pankratz stood, his posture perfect and his face as blank as a clean, graphite slate, as he watched the shuttle slip smoothly into the hangars, landing far more lightly than a craft its size should reasonably have been able to.

Admiral Denhard stood before him, his glare the only thing betraying his incandescent rage at the situation that he found himself in, as they waited for the Inquisitor that had been assigned to them to disembark. He’d been seething ever since the meeting with the Grand Inquisitor, and Julian had taken more than a little petty joy in the man’s misery.

Especially given that Denhard had proven to have quite a penchant for delegation. He’d have laughed at such an overt display of incompetence, had _he_ not been the one saddled with half of the bastard’s desk work.

The ramp of the shuttle - bog-standard, _Lambda_ -class, as was the Imperial custom - lowered with a hiss, smoke curling from the sockets of the pole supports, which really couldn’t be healthy for either the ship or anyone in its vicinity, and a man strode down the ramp.

This, Julian supposed, would be the Inquisitor.

He wore a black, fabric poncho with a red underside over skin-tight, practical black clothes. On most other individuals, the getup would likely have looked _good_ , but on this... agent of the Empire, they only served to highlight his lanky frame. He was so _slim_ , so skinny, that he looked as though the slightest touch could snap him right in half.

The Inquisitor carried what Julian inferred to be a lightsabre on his back, with a simple circular hilt design, and had long white hair tied back behind his face, highlighting the almost inhuman hollowness of his cheeks, and the eerie, unnatural yellow colour of his irises.

In short, the man looked almost stupidly unprofessional.

Like a child playing dress-up.

Julian resisted the urge to snort at his ridiculous getup. Really, even Captain Dewitt had been in possession of more self respect than what the Inquisitor apparently had, given his fashion choices, and, last he’d seen him, Captain Dewitt had been begging for his life from an individual wielding nothing but a stormtrooper helmet and a particularly menacing glare.

On an entirely unrelated note, Yennefer was an amazing woman.

“Inquisitor,” Denhard greeted the nigh-shrivelled man.

“Admiral Denhard.”

His voice was entirely unremarkable.

“You must be the... agent so kindly dispatched by the Grand Inquisitor.”

“There’s little else he could be, Admiral,” Julian muttered, under his breath. “Well. Maybe a particularly talented insurgent, but given the situation, it’s doubtful.”

Both the Admiral and the Inquisitor turned to face him, the former growing red with rage at an almost alarming pace, the latter regarding him with a quiet kind of curiosity- ah. Oops. That had been blatant insubordination.

“It’s an honour to have you on board the _Extinguisher_ , Inquisitor,” Julian chirped, pointedly ignoring Denhard.

“Flattery is useless.”

“How about manners? Propriety?”

Denhard growled. “Who are _you_ to talk about propriety, Pankratz?”

“Don’t argue in front of the Inquisitor, Admiral, it’s unbecoming,” Julian said, cheerful as anything. “So sorry about the odd welcome, Inquisitor, I am Captain Pankratz, and you are?”

“An Inquisitor,” the Inquisitor said, incredibly unhelpfully.

Julian smiled at both him and Denhard like he definitely wasn’t entertaining fantasies of decking either of them in the face.

“But of course,” he said, before Denhard cut in, interrupting him in an obvious bid to re-assert his authority over the situation.

“Inquisitor, I have been told that you have been assigned to aid the _Extinguisher_ in the identification of the insurgents that have been damaging our fuel exports.”

“Of course not, Admiral,” the man said, condescension colouring his tone. “I’ve no doubt you and your men can deal with mere insurgents yourselves. I’m here to help in areas where your proficiency has been found to be... lacking.”

Denhard stuttered and stammered a response, but Julian’s mind was already elsewhere, flicking back to the meeting they’d had on the bridge the other day.

What was it that the Grand Inquisitor had said? _He will be able to sense things your cameras may not catch_... Julian had assumed that the man had been alluding to his and Yennefer’s stealthiness in navigating the area, but scanners or even droids were a far better solution to that kind of thing than an organic being, even if they had the bloody Force on their side. 

No. It was inefficient and it was contrived, not to mention a waste of _perfectly good resources_ to send an Inquisitor to act as a glorified human radar. That many high-ranking personnel would never have signed off on it.

Julian had gotten sloppy. He hadn’t noticed what was happening right under his nose. Of _course_ this wasn’t just about the insurgents - this went deeper than that, it _had_ to, if an Inquisitor was the one sniffing out the underlying cause.

Forcing his mind firmly into the present, Julian tried very hard to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that had risen, like the tide, to herald his suspicions.

* * *

**Yennefer’s Ship, the _Stingray_ , Three Parsecs from Malastare**  
**Five Days Ago**  
**(a simpler time)**

_“So,” Jaskier said, grinning. “We’ve got a target to hit.”_

_Yennefer gazed back at him with bored eyes, and took a long sip from her cup of caf. “Is it Malastare again?”_

_“What- what do you mean, is it Malastare_ again _? We barely ever hit Malastare!”_

 _“We hijacked a shipment of Malastare fuel three standard months ago, and we robbed a refinery on Malastare four standard months before that. Given how valuable the system is to the Empire, and the fucking armada guarding it, most people don’t even hit Malastare_ once _. It’s too high-risk.”_

 _Jaskier pouted at her, and she felt a sudden urge to deck his stupid mug, full-force. She pushed it down with ease. No friendly-fire incidents. Not when she had precious little in the way of any kinds of_ friends _._

 _“Fine, okay, it’s Malastare, but_ listen _. The fuel is ridiculously valuable-”_

_“Of course it is, that’s why the Empire’s so big on security there.”_

_“-and besides, this is a golden opportunity. See, there’s two massive shipments going out at the same time at 2300 hours tomorrow - local to... Pixelito, I think is the city name? But regardless. One of these shipments is going to the shipyard at Kuat, as per usual, and the other is highly classified.”_

_Jaskier had gotten quite animated, at this point, and Yennefer rolled her eyes at his theatrics, though not without a certain small amount of fondness._

_“Get on with it.”_

_“I am! See, this classified shipment - I don’t know where it’s going, I don’t know why they’re sending it, I don’t know anything about it except for the fact that it’s heavily classified, and that for this reason, it’s going to be taking a lot more of an escort than the normal shipment.”_

_“Which means that the security on that one will be lessened, and it will be left more vulnerable to attack, thank you,” Yennefer finished for him, much to Jaskier’s indignation._

_That was supposed to have been the big reveal, evidently, but this was a mission briefing, and not a performance - even if the person delivering it was hardly more than a wannabe actor at the best of times._

_Jaskier grumbled about her_ stealing his thunder _, or whatever else undesirable thing she’d done to upset his honour, but Yennefer tuned him out. She cared for her friend, yes, but she didn’t love him_ quite _enough to indulge his senseless babbling constantly._

 _Instead, she turned to check the chrono built into the_ Stingray _’s cockpit, converting the display to the local time of the city of Pixelito, on Malastare, with the twiddling of a few buttons._

_Jaskier had long since stopped making pointed comments about adding an astromech to her crew._

_Pretty much everyone who she’d ever let onto her ship long enough to notice the technological lonesomeness had told her that such menial tasks would be far easier with an astromech. The thing was, though, that droids could easily be reprogrammed - she’d seen as much in the Clone Wars far too many times, even done it herself, on occasion._

_It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take._

_The chrono beeped, and displayed the Pixelito time - 2036 hours._

_It was time to start prepping for their self-assigned mission, then._

* * *

**The Fucking _Extinguisher_ , Fucking Malastare**  
**The Fucking Present**

“Oh, _cock_ ,” Julian said aloud, to nobody in particular.

The thing was - the thing _was_ \- that for all his less-than-unintentional ineptitude, and utter disregard for the core tenets of the system that he was part of, Julian considered himself to be... well. He’d been moonlighting as a fairly active vigilante, a _rebel_ , some might say, for almost as long as he’d held a rank in the bloody Empire.

That was, of course, a roundabout way of saying that Julian was _good_. He was good at his job, because if he hadn’t been good at his job, he wouldn’t have been holding the rank of Wrong Captain on a Star Destroyer above a planet that was extremely valuable to the Empire; he’d be regretting his life choices in the brig, instead.

Possibly to the tune of an interrogation droid’s blasted humming.

Julian was _good_. That meant he didn’t make silly little mistakes that got high-ranking Imperial lackeys set onto him, didn’t leave loose ends that were far too easy to unravel.

He especially didn’t make the kind of stupid, _stupid_ mistakes that would provide the Empire with irrefutable proof of the fact that they had a mole somewhere relatively high up in their ranks.

For example, he wasn’t imbecilic enough to attain intel about two large shipments of Malastare fuel, one classified with increased security, one routine with decreased security, and then promptly take his rebel friend on a jaunt to attack-

To attack the _wrong shipment_.

He wouldn’t. He was better than that, he had to be. He can’t have made the kind of ridiculous mistake that he so liked to laugh at his co-workers for - both for the sake of his dignity and his cover. One moreso than the other.

Julian ran his hand through his hair, fingers brushing against his nearly-healed head wound, and exhaled.

This was...

As far as mistakes went, this was the worst thing he could possibly have done, the most idiotic and damning slip-up he could have made.

Any evidence of inside help on the rebels’ end regarding the Malastare attacks had been circumstantial at best, the leaps of logic enough of a stretch that most suspicions would have been dismissed right out of the gate, if they were even voiced at all. He’d been careful about that, damn it.

Julian pushed down the urge to drum his fingers frustratedly on his desk. After years and years of getting away with sneaking intel and navigating both himself and Yennefer around Imperial security, he’d gotten sloppy, gotten arrogant. This latest development was only a stark reminder of what he’d always known: there was no room for error.

He was an idiot.

Two shipments, one with decreased security, and one classified, and he’d led both himself and Yennefer to the _classified_ one, the one that nobody outside of the military should have known about, and in doing so immediately revealed his existence as a mole to the Empire.

And it had been such an easy, such a simple mistake to make, too. So much so that he hadn’t even noticed that he’d made it. When he’d landed with Yen on Malastare and came face-to-face with double the security they’d expected, he’d laid the blame at the feet of a faulty estimate of his.

 _Something that may not be caught on cameras_. Of course. The Inquisitor had not been sent to root out insurgents, but treachery.

To catch _him_.

He would have to tread carefully, from now on - and that, Julian could do. It’s what he should have been doing on board the _Stingray_ with Yen, but there was no changing the past.

He turned on his datapad, and pulled up the latest paperwork that Denhard had relegated to him.

It would not be easy to get back the amount of freedom he’d had before the damned raid - before everyone was alert and looking for a spy - given his slip-up, but it was _possible_. Likelier, even, than the eventuality that the Admiral would suck it up and do his own paperwork, for once. Julian just had to play his cards right.

Step one, he supposed, pondering as he scrolled down one Midshipman de Launfal’s request for resources to monitor personnel entering and leaving the orbit of one of Malastare’s moons, was to deflect suspicion from himself. Too often, he’d seen traitors jump to framing someone else for their actions, and too often, he’d seen that be their downfall.

Framing was too often but a smoke screen. He needed something more solid if he were to make his tenure at the Empire last past this - he needed to be trusted. The Colonel trusted him now, and he intended to keep that trust, but that trust would crumble in the face of any evidence of insurrection.

He needed to deflect suspicion, and after that, he needed to project innocence. There was no easier way to feign innocence of something difficult than through incompetence, so he had that part down. Then, and only then, could he set up a fall guy, someone who could not deny the accusations. It was a simple enough plan.

Unless, of course, one accounted for the damn Inquisitor that had been sent to sniff him out.

That was an unknown variable - Julian had never before had to deal with an entity that could _read minds_ , save for Yen, but that hardly counted. Yen was a friend.

He allowed himself a chuckle, as he began to formulate a plan in the quiet of his dimly lit office. He could do this, space wizard or no space wizard.

He had to.

* * *

**Aboard the _Stingray_**  
**A Liminal Space Somewhat Adjacent to the Present Time**  
**(only accessible when one has not slept in seventy-two standard hours)**

_Fringilla Vigo was very good at her job._

_She was a damn good information broker and - to facilitate this - an even better slicer. There wasn’t a database that she couldn’t hack into, or a network that she couldn’t gain access to; not in_ this _galaxy._

_And yet, after a not-insignificant length of time spent poring over databases - all kinds of filters parsing through the registers of every being in the employ of the Galactic Empire, whittling down the amount of data she had to look through to the millions from the billions - she had to conclude that Yennefer’s duplicitous friend didn’t exist._

_At least, not in any Imperial system._

_He had to exist, Fringilla knew, even as she nursed her twelfth caf of the evening, watching her neatly coded algorithms parse, unnoticed, through the metadata of the Empire’s personnel files. She knew enough things about him to be absolutely certain that he existed._

_From what Yennefer told her, she could come to several conclusions. The first, that the man worked for the Empire in some capacity, what with both his ability to get a hold of Imperial intel and his fretting over increased physical Imperial security._

_Hence, the search through Imperial personnel databases._

_The second was some estimated biometric information - species, gender, height, weight, skin colour, eye colour, hair colour, and all that - that further narrowed down what she was searching for, and the third was that she was looking for someone whose time off-duty lined up with some of the times - estimated by the_ Stingray _’s logs - that Jaskier spent with Yennefer._

_The third factor - the most significant by which she could close in on Jaskier’s identity - came with a flaw, because of course it did. That information couldn’t be found in the metadata of every file in the way that biometrics, rank, and station could be, and so she’d had to run the programs that filtered the metadata, in order to shrink the billions of billions of individual data points in the Empire’s logs down to a number that was actually manageable._

_Then, of course, it all had to be decrypted. Fringilla had seen the merit in writing code to do it for her years ago, but even so, it took time for the data to be decrypted, and it took time for it to be run against the_ Stingray _’s logs - not to mention the fact that even her decryption algorithms were only reliable against certain types of encryption, and it seemed that the Empire took personal pleasure in further complicating her venture with arbitrary new techniques on arbitrary files._

_So she couldn’t even automate the whole process._

_Even so, her setup was running smoothly enough - the vast majority of files being automatically decrypted and processed before inevitably turning up negative, and the rest having a hand from Fringilla herself before being checked against the_ Stingray _’s logs._

_And yet, after seventy-two standard hours running the Empire’s massive databases through every single combination of algorithms she could think of to help narrow down the identity of Yennefer’s mystery friend, switching up parameters and processing information with only the tiniest fraction of a chance of being what her client was looking for - she was all but ready to conclude that the man... simply didn’t exist._

_At least, not according to Fringilla’s search._

_It was one thing to know this, however, and another thing to explain it to an extremely disgruntled Yennefer, who was - shockingly - none too happy to be parting with a not-insignificant amount of credits to be told that Jaskier did not exist in the Imperial database._

_“You’re joking, Vigo,” Yennefer said, flatly. “You’ve not gotten_ anything _from the system that we both know he’s logged in?”_

_Fringilla rubbed her eyes, and took another sip of caf. “If it helps,” she murmured, “I could probably tell you exactly what he’s done to avoid being detected via sorting algorithms.”_

_Yennefer crossed her arms, her face a picture of steely displeasure, and Fringilla resisted the urge to glare right back at her. Pointless bickering would do no good in this situation._

_“I would love to hear it.”_

_“The databases I work with to do these kinds of jobs are massive,” she said. “By their very nature, they contain billions, if not trillions of data points. You aren’t going to be able to do anything with that much information - it’s impossible to handle, it’s quite simply too big to work with it all.”_

_“And?”_

_Fringilla sighed. “What I do, when I’m tasked with identifying an individual data point within a data set, is narrow down the parameters within which I’m viewing the data. So, instead of looking at the data set as a whole, I would run a search for, say, male humans within a certain age range with brown hair and blue eyes. That way, I wouldn’t be trying to pick your friend out of a crowd of trillions, but merely a few million.”_

_“So you basically narrow down the search by increasing the specificity of who, exactly, it is you’re looking for.” Yennefer frowned, her gaze more interested than angry. “And, what, there’s nobody in the database who fits the criteria we’ve set up for Jaskier? How is that possible?”_

_“There are people who fit the criteria,” Fringilla corrected. “Thirty-four of them, in fact, but you’ve personally negatively identified all of them.”_

_“That still doesn’t explain why Jaskier didn’t get flagged up.”_

_“I’m getting there.”_

_Fringilla suppressed a yawn, and took another gulp of caf, emptying her cup. Darn it. Staying awake to complete a job as swiftly as possible generally paid higher dividends when said job didn’t prove impossible to complete._

_“Vigo. I don’t have all year.”_

_“The Empire uses the database in two ways,” Fringilla said, shooting Yennefer a glare. “One is to view files directly, and to do this, they search for a name, or a unique ID number, which is present in the metadata of the file that they want. Since we don’t know your Jaskier’s name or his code in the database, this is useless to us.”_

_“And the second way?”_

_“The second way is similar to what I’ve been doing - identifying an Imperial by biometric information, rank, or the system that they’ve been assigned to, and this is done by filtering the files based on the parts of the metadata that describe the biometrics and the jobs of each individual. The key thing is, the direct retrieval method doesn’t interact with that part of the metadata, and the filtering method does not interact with the name or code.”_

_“So, what?” Yennefer said. “Did he rewrite the metadata for his own file? Wouldn’t the Empire notice a discrepancy?”_

_“Yes and no,” Fringilla replied, a half-smile on her lips. “The dataset, like I said before, is too large to be handled normally, so they run algorithms against it that detect errors in the metadata, and flag them up to be rectified.”_

_“Wouldn’t him rewriting it flag up as an error?”_

_“No,” Fringilla almost-snapped, unable to stop her tired impatience from bleeding into her tone. “The files themselves are encrypted, so these algorithms can’t check the metadata against the data itself. The things that flag up as errors are empty fields, nonsense code, or syntax errors.”_

_“What, so you can’t find him in the system because he changed his hair colour to blond in the metadata of his file?”_

_“Yes, and no. Well. In a manner of speaking. Look, what I’ve done- to make the dataset I’m working with manageable in size, I’ve set up my own algorithm that filters the entire dataset and ignores anything that isn’t a possible Jaskier - that is to say, I’ve told it to look for male humans with pale skin, brown hair, blue eyes, of an approximate height and age.”_

_“But if Jaskier’s told the database that he’s a fifty-year-old woman, half his height with ginger hair and based on Alderaan...” Yennefer trailed off, eyes widening the tiniest fraction as understanding dawned on her._

_“The algorithm wouldn’t be able to check it against the information to spot the mistake, and any Imperial viewing his file wouldn’t have access to the metadata unless they were trying to see it. So, provided that the name and ID in the metadata are intact...”_

_“He could have rewritten the part of the data that pertains to his personal information, without anyone being any the wiser,” Yennefer realised, shooting Fringilla another glare. “And that would make it impossible to find him in the database based on his own personal information.”_

_“And that’s exactly what he did,” Fringilla snorted. “Even if his file showed up when one was filtering the database with a different set of parameters, he could easily play it off as an error he didn’t even know about. It’s very clever of him, and incredibly annoying for me - we know exactly what he’s_ done _, but it’s effective enough that I still can’t_ find _him.”_

_“Fuck off.”_

_“Pretty much, yes.”_

_Yennefer sighed, a note of defeat audible in the sound. “So, what - we’re back at square one?”_

_“Not exactly. We now know that he either had access to the Imperial database, to be able to rewrite his file’s metadata, or he’s one hell of a slicer.”_

_“He’s mediocre at best,” Yennefer snorted. “But he’s stealthy. He could have stolen the codes he needed to access them, and snuck into a terminal.”_

_“Which is, comparatively, far too great a risk to take for someone only affiliated in passing with the Empire. And if he consistently manages to get good intel for you despite only being a mediocre hacker, but he’s wary enough to rewrite the metadata on his file-”_

_Yennefer blinked. “Once again, Vigo. Fuck off.”_

_“Congratulations, Yennefer. You’ve been fraternising with a double agent.”_

_“I’ll get you some more caf,” she said abruptly, and walked away with a stiffness to her gait that Fringilla supposed was an outward sign of the anger that Yennefer pretended she didn’t allow herself to feel - anger at all the rather important little details about her friend that he had likely neglected to share over the years they’d known each other, no doubt._

_“Please, don’t,” she called. “I’d much rather pass out on your floor.”_

_She almost didn’t catch Yennefer’s muttered assent as she left the room - no doubt to either sulk or meditate in her room - but collapsed against the wall regardless, sliding bonelessly to the floor._

_As tired as she was, sleep didn’t come easy to her - it never had. She let her heavy eyelids close, giving any outside observer the illusion of sleep, but her mind was still alert with the ramifications of her... failure, as it were, to find Yennefer’s friend._

_What kind of person would think to rewrite the metadata in their own file? What kind of person would know the system well enough to be able to successfully pull it off - who would know that the Imperial personnel database functioned like that in the first place?_

_The obvious answer was a slicer, but - Yennefer had vouched for his mediocre skill set in that regard, and it didn’t fit within his assumed modus operandi, as far as Fringilla knew, to lie to her. If he was one of the Empire’s IT personnel, slicing into systems he wasn’t authorised to access would have been the only way he could have gotten the intel that he’d made a habit of presenting Yennefer with._

_But the other option - the other option seemed far more outlandish, and at the same time far more realistic, given what little Fringilla knew about the man._

_She let a tired smile flit across her lips as she began to drift off. If she was right about Jaskier’s position within the Empire - and she rather suspected she_ was _right, being wrong about things was bad for business…_

_If she was right, Yennefer was going to kill the poor sod the next time they met._

* * *

**The Office of Captain Pankratz, aboard the _Extinguisher_**  
**Six Standard Hours Since his Last Internal Crisis**

Julian stared blankly at the ceiling, thinking of the weather.

The weather on Coruscant had always been dull, a nice temperate climate with very little variation in meteorological events. It hardly ever rained - the ecumenopolis was so built-up, so covered with impermeable materials, that a natural water cycle was nothing but a pipe dream. He’d longed to see the rain as a child.

Five times seven was thirty-five, and Coruscant had never had any cloud cover, but nobody had even noticed that over the smog that covered the planet like a shroud. Nineteen times seven was ten times seven plus nine times seven, and the sheer height of some of Coruscant’s skyscrapers messed with the pressure and created local micro-climates, and that was twice seventy subtract seven.

The planet orbited so far from its sun that it was naturally inhospitable, but the temperatures were artificially increased through the sheer amount of thermal energy released by the cityscape, and nineteen times seven was one hundred and thirty-three.

Nope.

Still hadn’t managed it.

Julian was about as sensitive to the Force as a rock - perhaps even less so, if Yen’s jibes were to be believed - and he couldn’t resist a mind-reader the same way that she could, vexingly enough. She called it _shielding_ , and it was a technique that Julian could sadly never master - but his idea was something along those lines.

He’d tossed the idea at her as a hypothetical, once - masking one’s actual thoughts with different thoughts, to evade the kind mental probing of a space wizard - and she’d told him that it was theoretically viable. After all, there were layers to the human consciousness - if she was only monitoring his thoughts, then she could only glean what he was thinking.

Or, to put it simply, a mind-reader couldn’t read thoughts that he _wasn’t thinking_.

His hypothesis was simply to disguise the thoughts that he was thinking with a stream of different, less damning thoughts, that he was thinking more loudly.

It was possible in theory-

In theory.

Theory wasn’t practice, and no matter how hard he bloody tried, he couldn’t _mask_ the sums he was doing with his musings on Coruscant’s climate, only muddle them.

Perhaps Yen had had a point with- what was it that she had said?

 _That’s not how thoughts work, Jaskier_.

Even so, his mind and the bloody Force could excuse him for trying. Up until their illuminating midnight discussions, he’d thought that the way thoughts worked was along a pretty sturdy base principle of _if it’s in my head, other people can’t hear it_.

Either way, if the Inquisitor could read his mind, Julian was even more fucked than he’d previously assumed - his thought his thoughts freely enough that they would all too easily damn him.

He had to laugh. He’d never considered that the thing that would get him thrown in a cell for the rest of his - undoubtedly short, were it to happen - life would be _literal thought crime_.

Of course sending an Inquisitor was the natural response when one was tasked with identifying a spy - the bastards could _read minds_. It would be over before it begun, especially given that most people knew very little about how the force actually worked - most of the crew, come to think of it, probably didn’t even _know_ that mind-reading was one of the things that the Force so kindly allowed its users to practice.

He knew he hadn’t known - at least before he’d met Yennefer, and _eventually_ figured out the whole ex-space-wizard thing that she had going on.

Lucky him, really. Perhaps the Force wasn’t admissible in a court of law, but the Empire didn’t believe in _justice_ so much as it believed in _efficiency_ \- something that eliminating any threat to itself, potential or realised, figured solidly under.

That Inquisitor would be judge, jury, and executioner alarmingly soon, unless he figured out a way to-

Wait.

The Inquisitor was a mind-reader, but Julian retained authorship over what, exactly the Inquisitor saw, even if his stupid thought-masking idea hadn’t been viable. He only had to work within the parameters - he seemed to be chock-full of rookie mistakes, these days.

The situation was as such: the Inquisitor could read minds, and as such, he would be able to see - or hear, or _whatever_ \- what Julian was thinking. Therefore, if Julian thought about his treachery, it would be noticed.

On the flip side, thinking about being a traitor seemed a bit unimaginative. 

Julian hadn’t been as successful as he was - in either one of his careers - by being _unimaginative_.

The scrawny, Force-using bastard would likely be operating off of the assumption that whatever he gleaned from his mind-reading ventures was _true_ \- and, in all fairness to him, why would he have any reason to think otherwise? It wasn’t as if though the Empire’s run-of-the-mill officers would have any reason to lie to themselves in their own minds.

Most people took it for granted that their thoughts were private. Julian usually did, too - but he’d had an advance warning, this time, that they _weren’t_.

So, if he put his illicit side-hustle on hold, for a while, and falsified his innocence in his own mind - thinking about drinking shitty whiskey in a Malastarian cantina when in actuality he’d been hijacking fuel, thinking about playing sabacc with some of the friendlier dugs on the planet when he’d been rendezvousing with Yen aboard the _Stingray_...

That was, as far as Julian knew, pretty much _how thoughts worked_ \- he could imagine doing things he hadn’t done in place of those that he had with relative ease - and it wasn’t like the Inquisitor had any reason to second-guess what went on in the privacy of his own mind.

He’d always been a good actor, a good pretender - this was just method acting.

It sounded easy enough, when he laid it out in such terms. It was like- it was like when he’d played pretend, when he was a child, except this time, if he did it wrong, an evil fascist space wizard would kill him.

Julian grinned into the hazy darkness of his poorly-lit office.

He was feeling better about this already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fringilla Vigo: genius hacker, formidable warrior, and notorious floor-sleeper.
> 
> Next chapter will have less space-IT-that-I-just-made-up and more action that would have made it into this chapter, had I not been so preoccupied with space IT that i just made up.

**Author's Note:**

> What’s that?? I don’t need another fucking wip?? I have work to do?? But..... i love the Star Wars :(
> 
> First time doing an au with another fandom let’s GOOOOOOOO
> 
> Complain about me and my writing on tumblr @stars-in-my-damn-eyes


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